Pattyn's father is shot dead and she's on the run, with only a small amount of money, a few basic necessities and her wits to keep her ahead of the police.

She flees her small Mormon community, ditches the gun and heads west, hoping to see the ocean before she's caught. Meanwhile, her sister Jackie and her mother and younger siblings are left to start over on their own. The story shifts between Pattyn's perspective and her younger sister Jackie's, who insists that Pattyn saved her when her older sister interrupted a gruesome beating. This is a compulsive page-turner about family, the strength to start over and the unburdening freedom of a monstrous abuser vanishing. Hopkins is a master storyteller who takes on difficult topics — abuse, rape, poverty, race, immigration and religion among them — with grit, grace and lyricism. “Smoke” is a sequel to “Burned” and gives some resolution of Pattyn's story, but stands on its own merits.

Wild-haired, nonconforming Bea Washington got kicked out of private school and straight into rehab. Now she's out, clean, headed to public high school and — disturbingly — figuring out that her non-drug-addled mind has a new talent. She can draw the truth from people, literally seeing their thoughts.

Still dealing with her own troubles, Bea gets tangled up in the hunt for a serial killer when she sketches the images flashing through a recent rape victim's mind. This is part one of what promises to be a suspenseful mystery series with a fresh, edgy, in-your-face heroine.

“Over a year ago,/ I went into the ocean/ with my whole life/ planned out, expected,/ casually tucked between pages/ of a sketchbook,” the novel “Formerly Shark Girl” begins.

It's been a year since Jane lost an arm in a shark attack. She's struggling to relearn how to draw and paint with her other hand, is torn between college choices and can barely breathe when working with her science tutor.

Bingham manages to say a lot with few words, conveying both raw honesty about Jane's ongoing recovery and the confusion and hope of a senior year.

The book is told in gorgeous narrative verse, along with text messages and well-meaning but mostly misguided letters from strangers. This is a sequel to Bingham's debut novel “Shark Girl,” but readers don't need to have read the first one to get caught up in Jane's story.

His father is gone. His mother's disappearing deeper to alcoholism. Her violent meth-addicted boyfriend has driven his older brother away. The only semi-friend 15-year-old James knows is the kind English teacher who gives him adventure books to read.

James wanders the streets and railroad tracks, hungry and lonely, to stay away from the instability at home. When his older brother reappears and ropes James into a drug deal, he plunges into his own perilous, bewildering and terrifying adventure through the juvenile justice system.

Goodman is a school psychologist and knows the world he writes about, where James is an outsider longing for a stable foothold. “But my biggest fear is that the world has made up its mind about me: I'm not wanted. I'm out,” James muses.

Twerp

By Mark Goldblatt

Random House, $16.99

Twelve-year-old Julian Twerski will do anything to get out of a Shakespeare assignment. So when his English teacher tells him he can instead write a journal about what led to a recent suspension, he takes the deal. And so he begins to spin tales of his schoolmates, launching readers straight into the head of a sixth-grade boy who's no longer the fastest kid in school and has the unpleasant task of writing a love letter for a friend.

“My English teacher, Mr. Selkirk, says I have to write something, and it has to be long, on account of the thing that happened over winter recess — which, in my opinion, doesn't amount to much,” he notes. Julian builds his way up to revealing the truth of a bullying incident in this funny, poignant tale. It's really a book geared to pre-teen readers, but teens (or anyone who has been there and done that) would enjoy.